*OFFICIAL* Alienware 17 R2/R3 Owner's Lounge

Dell engineers desire/want the laptop to be completely silent. They do not care about that the laptop overheats and uncomfortable to use.

 

Problem after problem with this laptop, i'm starting to regret it, first the psu, second the fans and overheating, now the Bluetooth is useless, doesn't let me transfer or receive pictures from my phone, asus would have been a better option.

on a side note, the processor listed on the website and even the box is the i7 4710hq, however when i go into device manager and under system it lists the i7 4720hq, is this possible?

 

Yes. Dell used the one that they had of processors when they built the motherboard. i7-4710 vs i7-4720bga does not matter. Same useless trash. Some manage to keep 47W TDP while others do not.

 

They made "special" drivers for a reason, the Nvidia ones are for the dedicated desktop GPU's & not laptop solutions. They might still work but you are better of with the Dell drivers is what I would have said if Dell wasn't proving me wrong.

You know, the entire thread with it's 150 pages is proof that it might not be a good idea to rely on Dell drivers.

At least I couldn't get the Nvidia drivers to work on my old laptop which used Hybrid Sli, only the drivers from the laptop manufacturer worked. It might be different in this case.

This.

It's the entire problem of this laptop. Only a moron would design it like that though.

 

With as many Alienwares for sale in the FS forum I can't imagine buying one used with all the problems they are having.

 

Question:

Running my 17 R 2 on battery, gaming is miserable compared to on power supply, and benchmarking shows the same low scoring results. . . I've gone through power management to ensure that the CPU and GPU are both at a min state of 100% on battery, and nothing is throttling back. I have the GPU and CPU monitors running in the background and they appear to be operating at the right levels (3.4-3.5 ghz, and around 1200 mhz core - 1300 core). So why does my firestrike graphics score take such a dramatic hit when I'm on battery vs power supply? I have had zero issues with this system till this has started showing up.

Firestrike score on battery vs plugged in with the 980m

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/5466800/fs/5189969

 

The battery simply can't supply the amount of Watts required run your GPU & CPU at high frequencies and high usage - that's why it scores less than when on the adapter. The battery doesn't have a hope in hell of supplying the 150-180W+ that you need for proper gaming with an i7 CPU and 980M GPU. That's completely normal behaviour for gaming on battery.

 

Interesting, just never noticed this before. With the monitors hitting normal clock levels - it confused me. Oh well. I will say my previous alienware ran the same regardless of battery or power supply. But, it was also a lot less demanding and ran on a 150 watt PSU

 

If it is indeed hitting & maintaining normal clock levels when on battery, then it could be that GPU usage is just being capped somehow instead of throttling the frequency. But, it's clear either way that you can't expect the same performance on battery vs when plugged in to AC adapter.

 

On another note. My OC peaked at 4.2 ghz thanks to an overvolt on my 4710 CPU


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That's because Intel no longer makes socketed mobile CPUs. Clevo got around this by using desktop CPUs in their new machines.

As for not using MXM GPUs...beats me. Laziness? Greed?

 

It does, though the 980M still runs much cooler than previous gen cards.

 

Killer cards are known to have Bluetooth issues.

 

Thanks, it's a shame, I used to connect my phone through Bluetooth to play my music on the computer speakers using the phone as a remote. It is interesting I was able to do it with my old laptop, msi gt70 that had a killer adapter too

 

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/5485283/fs/5485210/fs/5467039

For fun, I ran 3 benchmarks to compare
1) 980m 4710HQ Stock on 180 Watt PSU
2) 980m 4710HQ Overclocked (CPU / GPU) on 180 Watt PSU
3) 980m 4710 HQ Overclocked (CPU / GPU) on 240 Watt PSU

Each bump equaled around 7-8% performance increase, or around a 16% graphics increase from stock GPU on 180 watt to Overclocked GPU on 240 watt PSU

 

I have a dump question, is anyone here experience with NVIDIA control panel missing some options? Only 3D settings appears. Is it possible to fix this problems or we must deal with it?

Spend your times and voting this. Get sick of dell engineers
http://www.ideastorm.com/idea2ReadIdea?v=1432006980935&Id=087700000009mDXAAY

 

Hi guys

I am new here and wanted to greet the whole round of this nice group.
My name is Harry and I am an oldtimer (a 69er) but not yet totally rusty

I am from Austria, therefore my native language is german, so I hope you apologize any typos or spelling mistakes (and the spellchecker is set to german as well, so it might change some words or add capitalized letters ... sooo ... well - how do I turn this bugger off?)

I have used an M15x since end of 2009 (i7 quad, HD 6850, 8GB RAM, 1 TB HD) and still use it. Having installed Witcher 3 as one of the latest games, I found that my notebook has reached it's Limit and will go into retirement as normal Office Laptop for my wife
Therefore I have ordered a new Alienware (a dread to get there, I might tell you some time how tedious it was to contact Dell about this, pre-purchase ... you probably know the hideous conditions Dell customer support is in, so I probably do not have to elaborate).
My System to be, is an Alienware 17 R2, HD Screen (no UDH needed), i7 4980HQ, GTX 980, 16 GB, 256 SSD, 1TB HD.

I now have read, that the standard 180w PSU is too small and is therefore throttling the GPU. I tried to contact customer support to ask them about sending a replacement instead (before they pack the whole system up and send it to me), but even IF I can reach them, they need the order number and customer number.
But I only have the "Internet Ticket Number" in their confirmation mail, nothing else, and that number is not the one they need.
In my account I have an order number but no customer number anywhere... so therefore the customer Service is again not available to me.

What are your experiences with replacement PSUs here in Europe? Is Dell delivering or are they trying to avoid it?

Another question: is the thermal problem already solved? Some of the AW17 turned terribly hot, I read. I dread getting such a System, giving, that the support pages from dell.at are a real joke...

I appreciate all answers you can give me.
Thanks alot.
cya around

 

Hi Henry

From my experience, you need to wait for the laptop to arrived in order to request the 240w PSU. For me, using the latest hybrid BIOS (A05) with 180w PSU right now runs fine, no power throttling that I noticed at the moment(although it will drain your battery when it under heavy load). I don't have any thermal throttling either. But it still way hotter than my previous gaming laptop.(normal use 60~, 70~80 when gaming). From what I read those problem depend on your build(which means luck ) .

 

@Buddy1969: hi man, i have some friends that bought the new Aw17 here in Italy, and they obtained che new 240w PSU for free. So i think you will not encounter any problem in Europe. Also they prefer to keep the A00 bios with 240W. It runs better and cooler they said.

 

Does anyone know how to reset the bios to factory on 17 R2 ? I've disconnected the PS and the battery and I've let it sit there but I would like to know how to disconnect the CMOS battery.

Thanks !

 

you have to dissemble it, its on the board. The proceedure is identical to getting to your heatsink. http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/alienware-15-teardown-repaste-guide.778264/

here is a picture of the cmos battery.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachments/20150705_131625-jpg.125772/

Good luck.

 

Based on what I've read on this thread and other pages, it's a bad year to buy Alienware?

Will the 330w from AW m18x work for this? Will it solve or atleast help remedy the throttling issues?

And finally, does the throttling still occuw when using the AGA?

 

I just got my 17r2 about a month ago and after dinking around with ThrottleStop 8 and Nvidia Inspector I have found a perfect balance with no throttle issues using my old 330w PSU from an m18x.

I have the i7-4720HQ with 980M gpu OC'd to 135/250 and CPU undervolted by 70.3.

I am able to run Witcher 3 for hours and temp usually stays under 80* with all settings maxed except hair works.

Running 3dmark I get a Firestrike score of 9200.

So far I absolutely love this machine after being a little worried from the negative posts I have read.

 

Does anybody know of any way to swap the glossy/touch screen for a matte display in the 17r2 without buying a new unit and selling mine?

I've decided I really prefer the matte screens.

N


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can any of the fellow Alienware 17 r2 owners screenshot his/her "device manager" page... I'm having trouble with 2 unknown drivers, a screen-shot would solve my issue... thank you in advance!

 

Maybe you should download all the driver of the laptop, especially the chipset. Install one by one to check. I have some unknown devices when installed new windows 10 from scratch, some chipset was pre-installed by Microsoft driver, but it is not cover the other (Driver from site cover couple of chipset that windows is not)


This is a screenshot of the driver I installed from scratch except USB3 driver can't install and Realtek is not needed since it integrate with Windows 10. And you may need to install Alienware On-screen display which solve Compal driver device.

 

How many Fps do you get in Witcher 3?

 

I keep a constant 60 fps with the occasional dip down to 55 or so but never really notice it.

I also tried tweaking things with XTU before I got ThrottleStop but i just didnt care for it and got rid of it.

 

Are the 2015 17" the same as the 2013's? I'm trying to find a laptop skin (Black brushed aluminum as I can't stand the silver. The only "non touch screen" skins i can find say "Released 2013" but they look literally identical to the 2015 when i google it.

 

No they are not the same.

 

Another question:

When building your laptop via the Alienware website, you can choose to have a SSD as a Master and a HDD as a Slave. Can this machine fit two drives? If so, can i just buy my own SSD and throw it in there?

 

it can house 4 m2.ssd drives and 1 2.5" standard HDD or SSD. the m2.ssd can be set as your boot drive and your OS can be installed on it (my preference). You can easily add the m2.ssd later without having to pay dell's premium.

 

Wow i'm glad i asked. I had no idea what m2 was until just now.

 

Yes. But note you can not put them into raid


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As long as i can use one as a master and one as a slave i'm cool with that.

 

thank you reptileexperts for the RAID answer, I was looking for that answer because I had the wish to install another M2 and RAID it...

 

Hi: I damaged my AW17 R2 where the charging ports is, and the keyboard was shifted a bit to the right so some keys got stuck. Anyone know how to open up the case and re-position the keyboard, i.e, where are all the screws? I have opened up my Sony Vaio before, so not afraid to do the AW17 R2 as long as there are pictures or photos from someone who have done it.

TIA

edit: I found the procedure in the Dell web site.

 

I'm sorry if this was asked 1000 times already but could someone post a link for the 240watt PSU for this machine? (maybe add it to the first post?)

 

I have done it. Took it apart using Dell's support diagrams and directions. Very easily done. The only caution is the connectors. Do not completely remove the ribbon cable connectors, just lift them a bit and pull the ribbon cable out. It makes reconnecting them easier. Now my keyboard is somehow re-positioned by itself and I did not have to open the keyboard assembly.

 

THERE IS NOW AN ALIENWARE 17 R3 CHECK THEIR WEBSITE WEW i hope they addressed all the problems of R2

 

4870 replaces the 4980 as the top spec processor (3.7ghz vs 4.0ghz)
4720 officially listed as the baseline i7 over the 4710 (3.6 vs 3.5 ghz)
Ram compatibility has been upgraded to 1866mhz instead of 1600mhz
USB type-c added (1 slot)

Guess its nothing to get extremely mad about processors are still BGA and its still a soldered GPU

 

Dell made a big upgrade on the processor. Upgrade from i7-4980hq "up" to i7-4870hq .

 

What's interesting is they have a graphic showing how the machine is put together. And you see why the keyboard gets hot. Typically, the heatsink/heat pipes run underneath the motherboard (aka between the motherboard and the bottom panel). On this machine, they decided to have the cooling system sandwiched between the keyboard and the motherboard (so the heatpipes run directly beneath the keyboard instead of having the motherboard there to block/absorb some of the heat).

This also means that gaining access to the fans/heatsinks and CPU/GPU requires a complete tear-down, rather than just removing a few screws like before.

Cutting-edge craftsmanship? Yeah right.

 

It's nice that you pointed that out.

 

The only thing to say; A downgrade from previous model's. Some experience a heat problem in these models, so a new application of Therma grase may be the solution. But to do the job becomes harder for many with such a design of the laptop.

 

Well... thinking about it from another angle, the heat has got to go somewhere (hint: up). If the motherboard was in the way, all it would do is get toasty along with the keyboard (I can't imagine that being good for its lifespan). And...

 

This as you now say; Does not occur on earlier Aw17R1. The cooling is below the motherboard. Have never experienced that the keyboard gets warm on my AW17 with processor overclocked to 4.3ghz on all 4+ high oc on gpu.

 

It's also significantly thicker... R2s have a thinner chassis = less air cooling - I wouldn't expect a laptop to overclock as well as a full tower either.

 

Something is wrong either way with the construction of Aw17R2. Do not think there are a lot of other gaming laptops with the same high temperature on the keyboard during use. You can't only blame on a thin design when the laptop has heat problem like this.